Tag Archives: blogging

October 18-24 is Digital Citizenship Week! As educators we need to model strong citizenship, both online and off, and provide our students with the support and knowledge needed to be skillful and safe contributors in digital learning spaces. Check out these resources to support your ongoing digital citizenship and safety talks with students. Great talking points and graphics to share at an upcoming class meeting!

Our next Wired Wednesday will be held on October 21 at Brecknock Elementary, from 4-5 PM. The topic is Elementary Research! We’ll review key copyright topics, explore the built-in research tools in the Google Apps suite, and check out other elementary-friendly research sites. Please register in My Learning Plan!

Edublogs student passwords have now been updated. Please consider the following information when deciding how you’d like to organize student blogging this year:

Students are currently assigned to the blog class they used in 2014-15 until this year’s teacher alerts me that they will begin blogging in a 15-16 class.

How we set up and manage your students’ blogs will depend on a few things:

Do you want your students assigned to your “My Class” by homeroom and only you, as the homeroom teacher, will manage their posts?

OR by language arts roster, and only you, as the language arts teacher, will manage their posts?

OR does your team want to have all students involved with blogging across content areas and therefore all team members need access to every students’ blog in the grade level for moderating purposes?

OR do you want students to be added to a teacher/team blog so they can post and add comments, but not have their own individual sites?

OR a unique scenario, such as assign certain rosters of students to certain teachers for blog moderation? We can also set up group blogs for projects like literature circles and the Global Read Aloud!

Please discuss student blogging plans with your teammates and the options above. If not all members of the team are interested in having their students blog, you can certainly move ahead with plans for your homeroom or your language arts class.

IU13’s Elementary Technology Conference is coming this December! Please consider requesting to attend this conference! Talk with your principal and register in My Learning Plan! It’s always a great event, with a lot of teacher-led sessions, specifically focused on elementary! The keynote speaker this year is an inspiring teacher from Illinois, Josh Stumpenhorst! More info here.WE NEED PRESENTERS FOR THIS CONFERENCE! Please consider submitting a proposal! The reason this conference is so special is because sessions are led by teachers, for teachers. Please share your expertise with colleagues by submitting a proposal!

Enjoy the milder weather and hope to see you soon at an upcoming Wired Wednesday workshop!

Happy reading, and have a wonderful week! Reach out to me anytime if you need guidance with lesson integration ideas, things you’re wondering about hybrid/rotational learning, or anything instructional-tech-related!

Pete & C was held this week and there were a number of great resources shared for all content areas and educators. I attempted to compile some of the highlights of sessions offered to share with you. Peruse the resources below and/or check out the main session listings for additional topics and resources. Let me know how I can help you plan to incorporate some of these ideas into your classes!

It’s a new year, and we’re settling back into the swing of things, so why not try just one new thing, one new way to incorporate instructional technology into teaching and learning in your classroom? Challenge yourself!

Think about your professional growth goals, and how your goal statements are incorporating the district’s Spartan Digital Competencies. Which areas are you most in need? How can we support you in your professional learning?

Want some ideas? Read the ideas shared below, then contact me to set up a time to meet and discuss and/or for me to assist you and your students in your classrooms!

Help students share what they’ve learned!

Edublogs can be used not only as a blog space for writing, but as a digital portfolio space. Students can share projects they’ve completed, can summarize key ideas and main takeaways from content area lessons, and more. With the ability to embed multimedia into posts, the possibilities are limitless! Students can then view peers’ projects, and you can even connect with other classrooms to promote cross-school collaboration. Your students will be thrilled with the feedback received by an authentic audience!

Write inspiring digital stories!

Using digital storytelling tools, students can share their writing using both their own illustrations (Little Bird Tales) or with gorgeous artwork in the Storybird galleries. I can help you set up accounts for students and intro you and your students to the applications. They’re both easy to use, perfect for even our youngest writers!

Teachers can create classes in Discovery Education and assign students Discovery Education content and assignments. One of students’ favorite creation tools is BoardBuilder – where they can combine multimedia and text to share what they’ve learned about topics. Students can search through the quality videos, images, and articles in Discovery Education and add that content to their boards. Here is our Discovery Education resources page to help you learn more.

Earn and claim your badges!

Elanco is using Credly to acknowledge the efforts of our staff members who challenge themselves to incorporate instructional technology into teaching and learning practices. Be sure to read more about Credly and how you can earn and proudly display your badges! Grab some today!

Now that we’ve wrapped our heads around new content providers and devices and Edublogs and a redesigned Google Drive and all of that good stuff, you’re probably yearning to read more about the latest news from the world of edutech! Read the latest edition of Tech Tidbits below to learn more! Last year, I used a tool called Smore to create our Tech Tidbits editions. Since the free version limits a user to 5 flyers total (boooo), this year I’ll try using Tackk to curate and share with you!

Who is Lyn and why does she have this blog? Hello! I’m Lynmarie Hilt, the elementary tech integrator/coach for Elanco. This is my second year in this role. I am excited to support the teachers and students in all three elementary buildings! To read more about the types of support I can offer you, read this page. On that page is a form that you can complete to request to meet with me, or to request classroom support time. Here’s the direct link to the Lyn request form. This blog is the main space where I post tutorials, guides, and ideas for using technology meaningfully in the classroom. Please use it or email me anytime you need anything!

Subscribe to this blog using the button on the top righthand side of this blog’s sidebar if you’d like to receive email notifications whenever I post something new!

BrainPOP account information was emailed to all elementary teachers. Please let me know if you did not receive these district elementary credentials.

Qwertytown accounts are in the process of being updated for the new year. Students can use their current logins, but new students will not have access until the rollover is complete.

About the “Computer Lab” Special – First, please welcome two new faces to the world of elementary technology, Jessie Huddle (Blue Ball) and Mary Romanello (New Holland) who will serve as our building computer lab/cart teachers. Both are new to the role and eager to get started! Please remember: you, as the classroom teacher, can direct your students to complete any and all project work during computer labspecial.Did your kids start a presentation in class or a writing piece and they need more time to work on it? Would you like your students to have more time to work on blog writing or collaborative writing in Google docs? Or to create a digital story that you started together in the classroom? Simply tell your class’s computer lab facilitator, and that 45 minutes of class time will be devoted to your students’ project work. Yes, there will be activities designated for lab time, such as Qwertytown and other computer-based learning experiences and digital citizenship lessons, but please know as the classroom teacher, you should plan to have that additional 45 minutes of project work time for your student whenever needed. If you’d like a certain type of project kicked off in the lab, such as the introduction of Little Bird Tales, Storybird, or using other presentation software like Google Slides or PowerPoint, please submit a request form to work with Lyn so she can schedule that lesson.

Edublogs – The teacher websites currently associated with our Elanco website will be removed in October. If you have not already done so, you need to establish an online presence to promote home-school communication using Edublogs. Do this now! Do not wait until October! Trainings were offered over the summer, and now that school is beginning, it will be imperative that you schedule time with me to get your Edublog site up and running. If you did not submit a request form to have a new Edublogs site created for you, click here to do so.

If you already have an Edublogs site, it IS live! Simply share the URL with your students and families and they can visit your blog directly.

Student Blogging with Edublogs – Next week, information will be shared with all elementary teachers about how to get your students started with Edublogs if you are interested in developing a classroom community of bloggers this year. Reminder, we will not be using Kidblog for student blogging. Even if you’re not ready to set up your students’ blogs at this time, save that email so you have the directions handy when you’re ready to do so.

Smart Notebook – By visiting the Software Center on your laptop, you can download the new Smart Notebook software to your computer. This software is much more functional and has many more features than the Easiteach software that comes with your Enoboard. We will offer Smart Notebook trainings in the coming months. Feel free to play around in the meantime! There are many tutorials online and I will add resources as I find them to our Interactive Whiteboards page.

Copyright-friendly Media – I am thankful Dr. Hollister reiterated the importance of using copyright-friendly material on the products you and your students publish. I created a Blogging Resources Symbaloo for you to find copyright-friendly images, music, and video banks, as well as guides and best practices when it comes to using other people’s work in your publications.

LanSchool – I generated the CSV files you need to build your class rosters in LanSchool and emailed those to Gr. 3-6 teachers yesterday. If you and your team are new to LanSchool and/or you would like a refresher on how to use LanSchool, please schedule time to meet with me. Here are LanSchool resources and reminders on how to upload class lists.

Student Start/Homepages – When students in Grades 2-6 log into their computers and open a web browser such as Internet Explorer or Chrome, they will now see the Spartan Cloud Portal as their start page instead of Symbaloo. Students will need to then log into the Portal to have access to their “apps” and shortcuts. K-1 students will continue to see the Symbaloo K-2 page. (1st graders will have to sign into the Portal once their devices arrive.) Generic usernames for each building will have the Symbaloo K-2 mix as their start page.

IXL, ST Math, Achieve – I’m going to add tutorials and links to user guides and resources to this page as they become available. Hang in there as we get to know these new content providers and let me know if you need anything!

I think that’s all for now. I wish you all a wonderful start to the school year, and I’m very excited to work with you and your students!